Page 82 of A Time of Witches

Mrs. Jones now stared intently at the floor. Not Mrs. Williams. Her gaze descended over Sybil’s nakedness, consuming her skeletal legs and arms, the flatness of her breasts, which had deflated as she starved, the concave scallop of jutting hipbones, where even her womb seemed to have been carved away.

Perhaps Mrs. Williams was correct.

Sybil was not a woman.

Not any longer.

With her oily, tangled hair and emaciated body, she was barely even human.

She had not only been stripped of her clothing, but also her dignity. Her identity. She was bared, vulnerable down to her very soul.

Mrs. Williams stepped closer and Sybil drew back again. The wall hit the back of her heel.

What more could they want?

Mrs. Williams charged at her with cold, grasping hands, ruthless as her icy fingers crawled over every inch of Sybil’s naked body. Lifting, parting, probing…

There would be nothing found. Sybil knew this. She had been born with no marks upon her body.

When Mrs. Williams finally backed away, violent shudders wracked Sybil’s body, from the damp chill in the room, from the intensity of such violation.

“There’s a witch’s mark to be sure.” Mrs. Williams crossed her arms over her chest. “We just need to find it.”

Sybil remained where she stood, knees bent together to brace herself upright, arms folded over her withered breasts, shoulders curled forward over her torso, so her hair draped like an onyx curtain over her nakedness.

“We can look harder,” Mrs. Jones said in a quiet voice from where she stood. She hadn’t joined Mrs. Williams in the search but had slowly edged toward the door as if she meant to flee.

“We knew this might happen.” Mrs. Williams cast a disparaging look at the other woman. “You said you could do this.”

Mrs. Jones nodded. “I’ll get the pricker.”

Sybil shrank against the wall. “What do you mean to do to me?”

Her poor exhausted body trembled, muscles quivering with the threat of failure. Even as her spirit rallied to keep fighting, everything else begged to give up.

Mrs. Williams rummaged in that awful bag once more and produced a pair of sheep shearers, the two wicked blades catching in the candlelight. “We must rid her of all that hair.”

Sybil shook her head. “No. Please.”

This time, when Mrs. Williams approached, Sybil did not possess the energy to fight. She sagged back in utter defeat as the blades nipped over her skin, as hair sifted around her in a detached black cloud.

Her scalp chilled against the air, save the parts that burned where the blades cut too close. Next, Mrs. Williams set to Sybil’s under arms. And after that, Sybil’s most private area until all of her was shorn and pink and vulnerably exposed as a baby bird.

Sybil stared at the floor, imagining the worn wooden slats were gone, replaced by packed earth. Like the cottage she’d lived in with her mother.

In her mind, Mother brushed Sybil’s hair, sweetly humming that lullaby she used when the sounds of the forest made Sybil afraid at night. Later, that cadence was a tune echoed by nature when Sybil came into her gifts as a daughter of the earth.

She wrapped herself in that tune as it played out in her head, oblivious to the voices that floated nearby.

“Prick her.”

A cold point pressed into Sybil’s skin, sharp enough to pull her attention. Her gaze shifted, slow and lethargic, but not so delayed as to miss how the needle disappeared into the shaft. Poking, but not wounding; a trick meant to give the appearance of sinking deeply into her flesh.

Mrs. Williams pulled the needle back so the shaft pushed out from the hollow handle, appearing whole once more, absent blood. A sure sign of witchcraft to be pricked with a bodkin and not bleed.

Privy to the trick or no, Mrs. Williams gave a victorious cry. “There. You see? She is a witch. Something truly evil.”

Sybil closed her eyes, knowing herself condemned.